The Brief

If you’ve ever left a little extra space or moved aside for a motorcycle, you might have noticed riders flashing a peace sign or lowering their left hand toward you as they pass.

These gestures, known generally as a “motorcycle wave,” can be a signal of gratitude to drivers. And in a city full of tough traffic and grueling commutes, being briefly recognized on the road can go a long way.

You’re not legally required to do any of these things for motorcyclists, but it helps them get home safely, and that’s something you can feel good about.

What is a “moto wave” anyways?

Jeffrey Irvin, who has been riding motorcycles for about 30 years, told LAist the “moto wave” is generally a way for riders to greet each other.

“Basically, take your left hand off the handlebar and hold it down, wave at them with an open palm facing the rider,” Irvin said.

But it doesn’t have to be a wave — some people prefer peace signs, points, or nods. In Hawaii, Irvin said riders use the “shaka wave” by pulling their three middle fingers back to their palm and slightly twisting their forearm.

Richard Varner, chairman of the Petersen Automotive Museum and CFO of MotoAmerica, told LAist that people riding motorcycles are involved by nature — you can’t eat, you can’t check your phone, and you can’t adjust the AC while you’re on a bike.

That means they’re more likely to notice another approaching motorcycle or vehicle, Varner said, and gestures are really the only way they can communicate.

“I think it then becomes kind of a club too,” he said. “People are involved with other people.”

Gary Chaidez, who learned to ride in Eagle Rock about 58 years ago, told LAist it’s a way for motorcyclists to show camaraderie, and there can be different styles of waves depending on the bike.

Harley Davidson riders, for example, tend to keep their arm lower and pointed toward the asphalt, Chaidez said.

If you ever find yourself on the back of a bike, you’ll start to notice this regular sign of solidarity from just about every rider who goes past.

Why riders do it to drivers

For drivers, the gestures have become a way for riders to say thank you and show their appreciation.

“If you make a space for a motorcyclist, he’s going to wave at you,” Irvin said.

A man on a motorcycle demonstrating the peace sign version of a "moto wave."

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Makenna Sievertson

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LAist

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For example, if you’re stuck in stop-and-go traffic and you hear the familiar hum of a Harley Davidson coming up behind you, moving over ever so slightly in your lane can make a big difference.

Or if you’re merging, like the 134 Freeway east toward Glendale, and you leave a motorcyclist enough space to zip into the fast lane, the rider will certainly appreciate it, Irvin said.

California is also one of the few states where lane splitting is legal, and Chaidez said navigating through traffic jams with luggage and a passenger on the back of the bike can be difficult.

“It’s a squeeze, but people will see you coming in the rear view mirror, and they move over, and I will wave at them,” he said. “It’s a thank you.”

Gary Chaidez and his wife, Jan, riding on Mulholland Drive on their way to Monterey, California.

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Photo courtesy of Gary Chaidez

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Varner described the wave as an affirmation of good people doing good things.

“How often now do people really show appreciation for anything,” he said. “And you're going to get it, it's going to be more apparent, I think, because a guy on a motorcycle's out in the air, he’s out in the open. It's just that little courtesy that you don't see anymore that I think is really kind of what propels that.”

Looking at the rider and making eye contact whenever possible is also a good way of showing that you see them and won’t suddenly move into their way.

That being said, you’re still behind the wheel of a huge hunk of metal hurtling down the road, and your safety is also important. Don’t get too distracted trying to be courteous that you end up making an unsafe maneuver.

Why you shouldn’t be hurt if you don’t always get one

Now, if you take all of these tips into account and still don’t receive a wave from riders on the road, it doesn’t necessarily mean you did anything wrong.

They might feel unsafe or uncomfortable taking their hand off at that moment, like if there’s a truck with wide mirrors just ahead, so try not to take it personally.

Instead of getting discouraged, the best thing you can do is keep being courteous — you’ll get to brag about getting a “moto wave” sooner than later.

“We all appreciate our drivers who do that, and motorcyclists respect each other for riding,” Chaidez said. “Tell your friends. As you guys move over, you will get a friendly wave.”

Next time you visit the Arts District, head to CineOpera, an expansive rooftop patio where a DJ plays soft, bumping beats while Raging Bull plays on a large screen, all outlined against the backdrop of the setting sun.

The space

Guests gather on CineOpera's rooftop patio in the Arts District, ringed by cacti and string lights.

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Yewon Perry Kim

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Courtesy CineOpera

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It’s the reimagined former space of LA Cha Cha Chá on 3rd St., what founder Alejandro Marin calls "your rooftop living room, big TV and all." But that undersells it. CineOpera operates in quadruple time: part restaurant, part wine bar, part bottle shop, part open-air cinema — without the self-seriousness most rooftop spots wear like a cover charge. There's a sense of quiet opulence here that doesn't need to announce itself.

A film plays on a large screen as the sun sets behind the downtown L.A. skyline.

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The menu

The space is the newest effort from restaurant group Muy Salsa, whose roster includes Loreto in Frogtown and Santa Canela in Highland Park. Given that Muy Salsa built its name on Mexican coastal cuisine, you might expect something similar here. But Executive Chef Paco Moran, who also helms the kitchen at Loreto, took CineOpera somewhere else entirely.

CineOpera's Panzanella: heirloom tomatoes, torn sourdough, and a crown of burrata that leaves a strong first impression.

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Instead, Moran drew from an unlikely source: a documentary about Diego Maradona's playing for SSC Napoli, where the Argentine legend became an adopted son of a city that was not his own.

"We're not trying for Italian-Latin fusion," Moran said. "We're imagining what it would be like if you were an Italian cooking in Argentina, and vice versa."

Start with the Panzanella ($16) — juicy heirloom tomatoes, crowned by a mound of burrata spilling its cream into the olive oil below. Dovetailing is the Beetello Tonnato ($17) — thin rounds of red beet topped with raw bluefin tuna, dressed in a creamy tonnata sauce, finished with capers, cilantro, and slow-building habanero heat. It's a riff on vitello tonnato, the Piedmontese dish of cold veal draped in tuna sauce, except here Moran doubles down on the tonnata's brininess rather than playing against it.

The Fritto Misto knows exactly what it's doing: crispy calamari, fried eggplant, charred lemon, and a Calabrian chile aioli built for dunking.

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Complete the trifecta with the Fritto Misto ($17) — crispy calamari rings and fried eggplant mixed with fries, topped with fried parsley, served with Calabrian chile aioli and charred lemon. The crisp snap of the calamari against the eggplant's soft give kept pulling me back for one more bite.

The bottle shop

The real discovery at CineOpera wasn't on the plate — it was in the glass. The wine program, curated by manager and sommelier Jesse Brickel, might be the most comprehensive selection of natural Italian wines I've come across lately, and it doubles as a bottle shop: glasses run $12 to $15, bottles $31 to $130, or buy any bottle off the shelf at retail price and drink it right there for a $10 corkage — or just take it home.

The philosophy —"We want you to enjoy wine this good. and still be able to afford rent" — is included on the wine list.

Brickel, CineOpera's sommelier, backs that up in person. "We describe the list as 'bangers only,'" he said. "We want to be able to grab any bottle off the shelf and know it's going to hit."

It's the kind of pairing — menu copy and staff conviction both — most rooftop spots would never dare print. Proof that the markup game isn't the point here.

By the time the credits rolled, nobody at CineOpera seemed to be watching the screen anymore — they were refilling glasses instead. And no one seemed to be in a hurry to prove otherwise.

A judge on Thursday indicated that she’s inclined to order federal immigration agents to stop arresting people without warrants in Los Angeles if they haven’t assessed their flight risk.

If she grants the order, it would be one of the most significant so far in a wide-ranging lawsuit over the government’s ongoing immigration raids in Southern California. It would force agents to fundamentally change the way they’ve conducted the sweeps at the heart of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Since 1946, federal law has allowed immigration officers to arrest someone without a warrant only when they have probable cause both that the person is in the country unlawfully and that they are likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Courts have long held that to mean that agents are required to consider the person’s ties to the community, like a person having a job, a home and a family in the community where the arrest occurs.

However, in raids in Southern California and across the country, supervisors have told agents to “get out and start grabbing people,” and agents have ambushed people without knowing their immigration history and targeted Latinos at places like car washes and bus stops, court records and body camera footage show.

Last month, plaintiffs attorneys in the lawsuit filed with the court text messages and body cam footage that showed federal agents using racial slurs to identify targets in the Los Angeles raids. They argued the evidence showed immigration agents simply detained people who looked Latino.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s ruling Thursday means agents now need to obtain “individualized, pre-arrest probable cause determinations of flight risk” in the city and the areas surrounding Los Angeles, home to 19 million people.

That means people who have longstanding ties to the community, U.S.-born children and spouses and long-term homes in the Los Angeles area would not likely be considered by a court to be a flight risk, unless they have serious criminal records.

Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong on Thursday became at least the fifth federal judge across the country to block the administration’s warrantless arrest practices, following courts in Oregon, Colorado and Washington D.C. Two courts have also already ruled agents continued the practice of warrantless arrests even after being ordered to stop.

In July 2025, weeks after the sweeps first began, Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued an order barring agents from stopping people based on factors like their apparent race, speaking Spanish or wearing certain clothing. The Supreme Court eventually put that order on hold. Thursday’s order is distinct in that it doesn’t address who agents may stop for questioning, but what info they must collect before deciding to arrest the person without a warrant.

The ruling comes after a motion brought by attorneys for immigrants caught up in the LA raids, which began with high-profile raids under former Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino and have continued, with lesser public attention, into 2026.

Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, among others, analyzed 113 arrest narratives produced as discovery in the case, finding nearly 80% contained either no escape-risk assessment or used boiler plate language.

In those narratives, some agents wrote that they determined a person was likely to escape because they either allegedly ran from law enforcement officers, lived in a sanctuary state, ignored commands or just based on the person’s “illegal presence in the United States.”

In several instances, the government’s own body camera footage contradicted the arrest paperwork. For example, an agent wrote a man was “running in the opposite direction” during a warehouse raid in Pomona, but body camera footage shows the man was not running and had very limited mobility, court records say.

In another example, court records show an agent wrote a man was “running away” from him during an August 2025 raid at a Westlake Home Depot. Video shows the man was walking toward the agent while texting.

In depositions, federal officials defended warrantless arrests. The Border Patrol supervisor who oversaw the arrests of three men taken from a Pasadena bus stop testified that if a person makes a “self-admission of alienage,” that’s enough to justify a warrantless arrest.

Just walking his dogs

As part of the motion, attorneys for immigrants swept up in the raids released hundreds of new exhibits including body camera footage from agents, text messages and official orders from ICE headquarters.

In one previously unreleased body camera video, a swarm of federal agents move through a parking lot and stop a man with two small barking dogs.

A woman tries to explain to an immigration agent that the man they’ve detained does has papers, he just didn’t bring them with him. “Salió a caminar sus perros,” she says, telling them that he’d just went out to walk his dogs. The agent says he doesn’t understand – “No entiendo.” “It’s the law, ma’am,” another says, telling her she is welcome to file a complaint with the U.S. Border Patrol.

At no point in the video do agents ask the man anything about where he lives, where he works or whether he has family here, the kinds of questions courts have said agents must weigh before arresting someone without a warrant.

Citing newly released evidence, plaintiffs attorneys argued that immigration officials are also creating poor conditions in detention to force people to voluntarily deport themselves.

A man identified in a declaration only as D.V.V. said while he was detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County he was pressured multiple times to sign a form he didn’t understand.

“I asked to see the form. The second time, the officers took me to a meeting room where a man told me they would force me to sign if I refused to sign,” D.V.V. wrote in his declaration, submitted under penalty of perjury with the court.

“When I refused, they brought in a bigger man who said he would force me to sign. It seemed like they were trying to intimidate me,” he said.

One of the exhibits points to damage that can’t be undone. In a declaration, a tamale vendor who has been in the United States for more than 30 years describes the long-lasting impacts of being detained for five months in Adelanto.

“I want to be strong and move on, but I am struggling. I feel incredible sadness. I am not the same man I was before I was detained. I feel like a stranger to myself. Sometimes I cannot hold in all my emotions and I just cry for a long time. At night, I can’t sleep,” he wrote.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

LAist’s weekly podcast Imperfect Paradise has won a 2026 national Edward R. Murrow Award — among the highest honors in journalism.

The episode "Rebuilding a life, 100 miles at a time" won in the Podcast category and tells the story of Cesar Quijano, who was struggling with addiction and reentry following years in prison.

Quijano found purpose and salvation in an unlikely hobby: ultrarunning. The episode follows Quijano as he prepares and completes a 100-mile race and unpacks consequential questions about the support people need to successfully transition out of prison and into society.

The episode was co-reported by Lucy Copp and Senior Producer Natalie Chudnovsky and hosted by Antonia Cereijido, with production help from James Chow and engineering by Shawn Campbell.

The award was announced Thursday.

"We're honored for this recognition," said LAist Editor in Chief Megan Garvey. "This is a moving, well-told story of resilience and rebirth. It's a great example of the deep and human-centered enterprise journalism that is a hallmark of LAist and our flagship podcast, Imperfect Paradise."

The winning episode advanced to national consideration after taking top regional honors earlier this year. Another Imperfect Paradise episode, "Rebuild or leave? One Black family in Altadena decides their future after Eaton Fire" also won a regional Murrow award.

Residents and City Council members are raising concerns about Long Beach’s plan to shut down a fire engine, lay off dozens of firefighters and reduce fire station staffing on a rotating basis.

They said city management should consider other options to balance the budget before making cuts that would drive up response time and limit how effectively first responders can handle emergencies.

Objections came during a City Council meeting Tuesday night when officials discussed potential cuts at the Long Beach Fire Department, which are part of sweeping cost-saving measures City Manager Tom Modica proposed to close a $58 million deficit in the coming fiscal year.

Modica’s plan called for trimming $11 million from the LBFD’s $201 million budget. It would mean shutting down Fire Engine 14 in East Long Beach, eliminating 34 positions overall — including 28 currently filled jobs — and taking one engine out of service on a rotating basis among the city’s 23 stations.

Four fire captain positions would be cut, including roles tied to the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center, community services and public information, and training and recruitment, along with a vacant battalion chief position in the Operations Bureau. The Fire Department’s headquarters front desk would also lose its in-person staffing and shift to a remote receptionist system.

In arguing to shut down Engine 14, which operates out of the fire station near Colorado Lagoon, officials said it responds to about 2,200 — mostly medical — emergencies each year but only about 200 fire calls, which is fewer than other engines. Fire Station 14’s ambulance crew will continue without interruption, they added. Eliminating the engine, along with laying off the firefighters assigned to it, is expected to save the city $3.88 million.

Long Beach Fire Engine 14 pulls into Station 14 at the intersection of Colorado Street and Elliot Street in Long Beach Tuesday, November 29, 2022.

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Long Beach Post

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Taking an additional engine out of service on a rotating basis would save an additional $3.82 million.

But after pushback from the public and City Council members, Modica said his office would bring back other options to consider within the next week.

The City Council must ultimately vote on any cuts before they take effect.

What would the cuts mean?

Cuts of the magnitude proposed would invariably affect operations, Fire Chief Dennis Buchanan told City Council members. “When I say operations, I mean I have to impact the community,” he said.

The cuts would lead to an increased strain on firefighters and paramedics, leading to longer response times and instances where there is no engine available to respond to an emergency.

“Even a mild adjustment can affect the way we respond to calls,” he said.

Lamont Nguyen, president of the city firefighters union, said that the loss of Engine 14 would reverberate through the city. He said the engine, unlike some others, is also a paramedic-assessment unit, meaning it’s equipped to respond to medical calls and administer IVs and life-saving medication, or use heart monitors that could save someone in the time leading up to the arrival of an ambulance.

Firefighters and paramedics responded to more than 67,200 calls for service in the past fiscal year, department data show, with 85% for medical emergencies and 11% for fires.

The pushback

Councilmember Kristina Duggan, whose district includes Station 14’s coverage area, said the calls for service won’t stop just because the engine does.

She noted her district has more than 1,200 new housing units coming online in the next two years, along with an expanded battery storage facility next to a natural gas power plant.

“It still does respond to 2,200-plus calls per year,” Duggan said of Engine 14. “If Engine 14 is eliminated, that doesn’t mean the calls disappear.”

Calls currently handled by Engine 14 would be redirected to Engine 4 in Belmont Heights, Engine 8 in Belmont Shore and Engine 22, which serves the area near Cal State Long Beach.

Councilmember Daryl Supernaw said that redistribution could overextend Engine 22, whose coverage area already stretches north to Cal State Long Beach, sometimes along the 405 Freeway and south to the border of Seal Beach.

“To say it’s going to be impactful is an understatement,” Supernaw said.

Supernaw also noted that Engine 22 sits near the 405 Freeway and sometimes must respond to time-consuming freeway incidents and must go into the coverage area of Fire Station 18, which does not have its own engine.

During the City Council meeting Tuesday, resident Patrick Pianezza urged the council to reconsider the cuts, arguing that removing Engine 14 would leave a gap that ambulances alone can’t fill, since they typically don’t carry fire-suppression equipment.

“When you remove resources for public safety and public health, nothing good happens,” Pianezza said.

What’s next?

Mayor Rex Richardson has already proposed revising a portion of the cuts, specifically the rotating engine closure.

However, he said Long Beach has survived prior budget crises that also required public safety cuts.

“We know that budgets are cyclical. Sometimes there’s good years, sometimes there’s bad years,” Richardson said. “The last three mayors had to deal with it, the last three councils had to deal with it.”

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson outlines his budget proposals during a press conference at City Hall on Thursday, July 30, 2026.

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Long Beach Post

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He and others pointed out that Long Beach has closed and later restored fire engines before.

Engine 12 was shut down and took roughly a decade to be structurally re-funded, according to city officials, while Engine 17 was restored in 2019 after seven years without full funding.

Both engines, along with Engine 8, have since been brought back into service. Some council members and residents argued that history shows how difficult it can be to bring back a unit once it’s gone, even as the surrounding neighborhoods continue to grow.

Richardson expressed optimism that the current shortfall is temporary and that the city is on track to reach a structural surplus within two years.

“But the good news is, once it is structurally addressed through this plan, you know, forecast long-term fiscal stability that we haven’t had since the pre-pandemic era,” Richardson said. “That’s what we’re doing in this budget.”

You can give your opinion on the budget by submitting a comment card here until Friday. The City Council and its Budget Oversight Committee will also continue discussing the budget at upcoming meetings, which you can find here. City Council members must adopt a balanced budget by October.